In the cellar of an innocuous bar, a young doctor (if you could call him that) worked tireless on fixing up a ragged man's large torso gash. As the doctor, "Grimpot" as he liked to be called, sewed the rough man's chest with generic-brand stitches, small beads of sweat rolled down his forehead. He worried for how the minor procedure would fair, not out of fear for the patient's life but more so for his own. His tiny hands managed to clumsily tug at the thread a little too hard, earning a grumble from the towering monsters of a man. When he finished, Grimpot smiled hesitantly and bid his patient a farewell, "That should do it... hehe..." He scratched his head, not exactly a bastion of confidence but with some hope that no harm would come to him. The large man merely grumbled and hopped off the small table before heading out the door.

What he was doing wasn't exactly legal. The man's gash more than likely came from a marine attempting to stop him not too long ago, but Grimpot tactfully resisted asking questions. He needed the money after all; he had to pay his way toward home somehow. It didn't help that the bar owner took the majority of his income though.

After patching the probable criminal, Grimpot sought to ease his anxiety with a drink of ale. He wandered up to the ground floor of the bar and ordered himself a very tiny glass of the sweet nectar (he was quite the lightweight). At least, he would have ordered something if the bartender were not giving him such a hard time. Every time the young man asked for a drink, the bartender always had to prod at Grimpot's age and accuse him of not being "man" enough to handle such a drink. Grimpot's usual retort was to just agree and ask for a glass of water, almost as nice.

Grimpot took a seat next to the bar's front door to enjoy his delicate glass of water. With the doctor's special luck though, a man rushed into the establishment, knocking the door into Grimpot's back and causing him to spill his water. Tragic.

"Hey! Check what Mr. Cluckers can do!" The who had rushed in held a chicken up for everyone to see. Everyone in the bar eyed the chicken with suspicion and then awe as it began howling like a dog. Everyone, with the exception of Grimpot who continued to lament his fallen glass of water, got up from their seats to see the sight for themselves. They poked and prodded the poor beast until it started howling once more, earning the expected reaction from the enamored crowd. After their initial reaction wore out, however, the men and women all threw up the question as to how such a thing were possible. Their theories were all quite weird, especially to Grimpot who made little sense from their babbling of barking cows and a man who came from the sky (which a surprising number swore had happened).

The crowd eventually dispersed, deciding not to follow any of the leads they put forth since this anomaly concerned many of them very little. Grimpot, however, had a passionate curiosity. He'd never read about something so strange. He had to wonder if it were a sickness or the work of some devil fruit. His curiosity ultimately drove him to follow the rumors of a "bird man who came from the sky." One man swore he followed the man to a rural part of town where the bird man just fell asleep as if all were well. When Grimpot followed the directions, he did find one man asleep near some farmland, but nothing like one would expect a bird man to look like: young, handsome, and some appropriate sea-faring clothes. Grimpot took a good look at the man, then at his surroundings, and then back at the sleeping man.

"Hey, mister, got a minute...?" The young doctor bent down with a mildly worried look on his face. In such a strange place to fall asleep, Grimpot wandered if the man was ill or if something strange were just occurring.

Some cows continuously barked in the distance. In such close proximity to the sleeping man (combined with the stories of a bird man in the area), Grimpot cautiously poked the man ti arouse him from his sleep, intending to get some clues from him.

"Hey, you-" Grimpot paused in his welcome to the fellow swathed with dark hair as he heard a grumbling erupting from the sleeping man. As the man's eyes ripped open, a sudden confusion overcame Grimpot as he saw the pupils shift in a way that were frankly inhuman. They morphed from blue round pearls into dark, sharp slits (like those of a hawk). A moment to observe the funny change did not present itself as another major change occurred almost instantaneously—a transformation from a humanoid body into that of a hawk. The very idea of it struck Grimpot as absurd, forcing him to doubt what he was seeing. He had to be dreaming or hallucinating, but it felt too real.

The young doctor stood straight up and promptly fell backwards, throwing up a small plume of dirt into the air as he landed with a quiet thud. His small hands clamored to clench the dirt for some form of a support while eyes sunk back to form two large, white ovals. His feet, clad in his favorite dress shoes, kicked at the ground to push himself just a few more feet back from the apparent bird-man.

Grimpot stuttered several times before finally producing a coherent sentence: "I-I-I am Grimpot!" He shook a little when the hawk raised its two wings, clueless but worried nonetheless of what was about to become of him... which was nothing. The hawk merely hovered about in the air effortlessly before his formed shifted back into that of a human, landing right next to the petrified doctor. The remaining conversation wasn't too memorable as the bird-man promptly left for a bar, leaving behind a speechless Grimpot.

Grimpot turned to his immediate attention to the other man and, after a brief mutual pause, asked, "Did you just see that!?" The young man was almost wheezing for answer, something that reassure him that he wasn't just insane. "He turned into a bird, right!? I-you saw that too, yes!?" He forced himself back up onto his feet, wobbling about in a bid to keep his balance amid the confusion. "Oh no. No-no-no-no-no-no! He's going to the bar!" With that, Grimpot ran after the bird-man. The doctor's wished, after all, that as little attention as possible would be drawn toward the bar—where his illegal clinic-basement was located—and, sadly, a man turning to a bird was the equivalent of a fountain of attention. Grimpot could almost see his future flashing within his anxious eyes: bird-man brings attention, marines come, they find his illegal clinic, they take him to jail, and finally a lifetime of sadness. It was like a formula for misery.

When he somehow quietly went through the door, he nearly sank through the floor as he caught the awkward silence of the bar staring at the bird-man, followed by the rather brutal threat of slit throats. While he cried on the inside, Grimpot wandered over the bar, next to the freak of nature, and called the bartender in a defeated tone.

"I'll have that ale now, please."

Grimpot winced at the bird-man's brutish rudeness a common behavior among sea-faring types that the doctor had grown far too wary of in the past months and years. Among port towns where buccaneers were rampant, an average man could yearn for a bit of kindness like a thirsty man searching for water in a desert. That why, when the bird-man offered a tongue-in-cheek apology, Grimpot drank it down with fair humility, much like the mug of air he had just received from the bartender. He gripped the metal mug tightly and pressed the cold iron against his small lips and took a great gulp though winced and tasted his mouth when he equated the taste to bleach. He couldn't believe people drank enough of that hellish liquid to actually get drunk off of it. Regardless of the taste, he wanted to maintain the illusion that he could handle an alcoholic beverage.

After taking another big but regretful gulp, Grimpot cleared this throat of the burning sensation and accepted the apology with, "Don't worry about it. The last guy who gave me the business threatened to cut my hands off, so I can't complain," followed by a nervous laugh and a fake sip of his ale.

Grimpot sat his half-full mug down to spin around on his seat and listen to the shanty tune erupting from the earlier man's harmonica. It was a different tune than the bar was used to—piano music. The doctor used to spend hours listening to the piano man play, though it seemed Grimpot was the only one who ever requested a musical note from him. It was always the same request: Spanish Ladies, a classic song from his own home village and one Grimpot always sung to himself when the piano man did him the favor.

When the man finished on his harmonica, he walked over to Grimpot and the bird-man. Were the boy not saving up all his money, he might have bought the man a drink in thanks for the new tune of music. Instead, he merely offered the man a seat and nodded toward him.

"So... anyone hear of the rumor? The one about barking cows?"

Grimpot continue mimicking a casual drinker, sipping his own mug of ale as he intently listened to Keiji's autobiography. He found it somewhat hard to believe that the young man was pirate, for he himself had sailed with pirates for sometime and they were always so grimy and unclean, often with messy facial hair and tattered clothes. Grimpot looked past though, wandering more about the devil fruit part. It explained the apparent change into a bird, but Grimpot had always been under the impression that they were mere legends. They were talked about often in his hometown, one sailor even claiming he had one in his possession once. If they were real though, the doctor had so many questions for Keiji about them. What did the fruit look like, where did it come from, and did it have a specific taste to it? He wandered if Keiji's anatomy was still the same as a regular human... which made him wander if he was a human at all.

The doctor blinked at Owen at his own mention of being pirate. "You're both pirates, huh?" he laughed nervously, "I sailed with pirates for a while myself, well, sort of." Grimpot considered himself more of a willing hostage for the pirates he sailed with, but he didn't really know how to describe it in a way other than slavery. Nonetheless, he forced a chuckle and continued, "And I wouldn't really call myself a doctor... I don't have any formal training. It's pretty much been trial and error so far. But any who, I'm from... some islands in the North Blue." Grimpot didn't quite trust telling people where he came from. His village was a quiet one where few people visited, and he wanted to keep it that way. "Besides that, I run a 'clinic' here in town." He of course neglected to mention it was an illegal clinic. "illegal" was such a dirty word anyway.